Adam Hurtado of Santa Ana had to fight for his spot on "The Biggest Loser," competing at the beach in Los Angeles for one of two spots allotted the L.A. auditions.

Adam Hurtado of Santa Ana, left, competes against Montina Cooper and Ada Wong for one of two spots alloted to the Los Angeles audition for the show. Hurtado and Wong finished the challenge of 500 step-ups first and became the blue team on the season premiere on Sept. 21.

After making it past the first challenge, Adam Hurtado of Santa Ana started a new fitness, diet and health regime at "The Biggest Loser" ranch.

Adam Hurtado, second from right, works out at "The Biggest Loser" ranch. Always a big guy, his weight escalated out of control when a knee injury playing football for Mater Dei High School left him unable to exercise and burn off calories.

At "The Biggest Loser" ranch, contestants participate in regular workouts, learn healthy eating and compete to lose the most weight. Seen here, left to right, are Mark Pinhasovich, Alfredo Dinten, Jesse Atkins, Adam Hurtado of Santa Ana, Patrick House and Bob Harper.

Adam Hurtado of Santa Ana works out at the ranch. Hurtado is competing to lose weight, gain health and honor his mother, the late Nancy Downey-Hurtado.

Adam Hurtado is that guy who was always the biggest kid in his class, and for most of his first 25 years he was good with that.

He arrived in this world a big boy, born weighing 10-and-a-half pounds. By the time he was 12 he was more than 6 feet tall and 200 pounds.

And with supportive parents and the opportunities that sports afford big kids, Hurtado says he grew up feeling pretty good about himself, especially upon reaching Mater Dei High School, where he found a home on the offensive line protecting his childhood friend Matt Leinart, who went on to be a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback at USC.

“Always with my size it was applauded,” says Hurtado, now 26 and a part-time manager for a non-profit organization. “I never knew it was unhealthy.”

Then last year, tragedy came to the Santa Ana home where he’d grown up with his brother Ryan and his parents Nancy and Andrew, a moment so terrible that for weeks after Adam Hurtado says he felt like he’d fallen into some deep place out which he could not climb.

Many dark days later, while talking with Leinart, his old friend came up with a new suggestion: try out for “The Biggest Loser,” a show Hurtado and his mother Nancy had watched for years, and maybe he could lose weight, gain health and restore some of the happiness that had disappeared from his life.

Hurtado tried out earlier this year and made it onto the 10th season of the show. The first episode aired a week ago – the second arrives on NBC at 8 tonight.

As for his mom, for whom he’s embarked upon this journey?

“She’s watching,” Hurtado says. “She’s so proud.”

* * *

As his senior season at Mater Dei opened, Hurtado dreamed of a college scholarship, and maybe even a shot at the NFL. He was 315 pounds, playing strong tackle on offense and about to double up to play nose tackle on defense, too.

“We were going against the Mission Viejo Diablos and (future USC and New York Jets quarterback) Mark Sanchez,” Hurtado says. “It was my first game going both ways, and unfortunately I wasn’t in good enough shape. In the fourth quarter, I had the center held up and I got undercut.”

Every ligament in his knee was torn – it was a career-ending injury.

“That’s where I gained most of my weight,” Hurtado says of the 100 pounds or so he packed on over the rest of his senior year. “I continued to eat like a football player, but obviously I wasn’t getting exercise.”

Like plenty of high school boys, he loved the junk food, hitting fast food restaurants with his buddies after school or football practice and games.

“And my mom was a great cook, and she took care of us all,” he says. “My mom wasn’t Hispanic but my father was, and she loved preparing traditional Hispanic meals – carne asada, lots of cheese, lots of beans and rice. Lots of fat.

His teammates often came over after practice to chow down. “If a kid wanted to have a good meal, you knew where to come,” he says.

After high school, as Hurtado attended Orange Coast College and Cal State Fullerton, the weight stayed on, and he didn’t really worry about it much.

“Unfortunately that light never turned on for me,” he says of the thought that he really needed to shed a good chunk of those 400-some pounds he weighed. “The way my mom raised me, she knew that a lot of kids facing obesity dealt with a lack of confidence. But my mom had the ability to make me feel good about myself whether I was 200 pounds or 400 pounds.

“It was good for my morale, but it wasn’t good for my health.”

* * *

On the morning of July 1, 2009, life for the Hurtado family forever changed.

Adam Hurtado, concerned that his mom hadn’t gotten up at her usual time for work as an administrator at UCI Medical Center, went to check on her and found her on the floor of her room. Paramedics came but Hurtado says he could tell by the way she looked that she was gone.

Like her son, Nancy Downey-Hurtado was obese, which along with diabetes led to the heart attack that killed her at the age of 51.

“After my mother passed, I was in a very dark place,” Hurtado says, his voice cracking with emotion. “I hit rock bottom and then I realized that I was on the same path.”

“The Biggest Loser” had been a favorite show for both Hurtado and his mom, but it wasn’t anything he ever thought he could do until Leinart gave him a little shove.

“He knew that’s what I needed,” Hurtado says of Leinart, who in an appearance on the premiere last week described Nancy Downey-Hurtado as “a second mom” to him.

“Matt said, ‘Adam, you know, thinking back to how much you guys loved that show, and obviously you have a message to share now, I think you should give them a shot.'”

Leinart helped Hurtado find a contact for the show. Hurtado sent in a video application, in which he talked about wanting to honor his mother, and continue the community health work she had done for years, an idea that appealed to the show producers in this season where “The Biggest Loser” theme is “Pay It Forward.”

Callbacks and interviews led to his invitation to join the show this year, and since then, Hurtado says many things have fallen into place for him and his family, almost as if there’s someone watching over him now.

The annual Christmas toy drive that his mother started at a UCI family clinic in Santa Ana was renamed Nancy’s Miracle Toy Giveaway after her death. In December it provide toys, meals and health screenings for 5,500 kids, Hurtado says.

During the challenge shown on the premiere – necessary to make it to the fitness ranch and the rest of the series – Hurtado says that when he started to falter he called on his mother not to let him fail and found the energy needed to finish.

“It’s life changing,” Hurtado says of his experience on “The Biggest Loser,” a journey that so far has taken him from 402 pounds down to a number and a finish he’s not yet allowed to disclose. “It’s opened my eyes to a whole new world.”

And in that world, though he feels the absence of his mother every day, he knows he’s not without her.

“I feel her with me every day,” Hurtado says. “She always wanted me to be on the show, and for it to happen? I know it was her that made this happen.

“There’s no excuses for me know,” he says. “There’s no room for failure. And as long as I strive for it, and keep moving forward, I think I’m going to be fine.”

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.

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